The second time this season that Bale has dived, why does he disrespect himself and the team? Would rather lose than cheat
I second that, fair play bloke Not a mention of him diving by the pundits though, guess its because he isn't foreign.
I don't think we bottled it exactly but I think we got very carried away when we undeservedly went 2-0 up, Arsenal got riled by the penalty decision and played their best game for months. Bale does seem to dive sometimes and I abhore that, but I really don't think he did today. It was Gibbs that caught him not the goalkeeper and I actually think he was trying to stay up to get to the ball when it looked as if Szczesny fouled him. I think Szczesny woul have got the ball without the Gibbs trip so the ref was spot on in giving a penalty and no card.
Agreed...wasnot a penalty...the injustice of it seemed to galvanise arsenal. Unfortunately until a manager condemns his own players for diving then itll keep happrning....as for the pool fan...cough GERRARD cough.
Ah - the faint aroma of self-righteous indignation!! There have been occasions when Bale has gone down too easy - and others when he has made more of tackles than he should. But this wasn't a great example to condemn as it wasn't 100% clear either way. Running at speed into the box and being tackled on 3 sides, not one of which got the ball.
No-one likes seeing cheating less than me but I wouldn't be too harsh on Bale, he's not alone, in fact it's 'news' if someone doesn't cheat when they get the chance to. Talking of sportsmanship, great to see Parker at the end making sure TV was OK after his challenge, TV rejected the show of sportsmanship initially but he persevered in a calm way until they shook hands. Classy for me that....
I hate the fact he dived. I despise diving and any other form of cheating and quite frankly Bale should be ashamed of himself. Makes our defeat feel even worse knowing that one of our players tried to cheat to win. Perhaps justice was served and I hate to say it but I'd never want our club to need to cheat to win. On our day we play better football than anyone in the league, we proved that against Newcastle in our last league game and we've proved against many other teams too. Today was an off day, just a shame it had to be against our bitter rivals, credit to Arsenal though, I'm not saying they won because we were bad but we certainly helped them in their cause to smash us.
Diving has got so endemic in the Premier League that on last night's MOTD we saw Alan Shearer note that Frank Lampard "could've gone down" for a penalty during the match, yet nobody condemned this opinion for encouraging the use of underhanded tactics to win games. It's not the first time Shearer's made comments about diving that are supportive of players doing it, either.
He was going into the box, with two players trying to stop him, I don't think there was anything disgraceful about what Bale did. If a keeper comes out and tries to win the ball like that, most players go down. There's nothing outrageous about that at all.
I agree. He looked for the contact but that seems to be the norm these days. Certainly it's not worse than some of the rash challenges flying in at his heels in a cynical attempt to trip him.
This. I thought that it was a dive on first viewing and even on the first replay, but Gibbs clips him, in my opinion. Nobody seems to have paid any attention to that, for some reason. He does need to cut it out of his game, though. It's not something that we need and it gives refs an excuse not to give anything when he's genuinely being clogged out of a game.
TBH I've notcied Bale dives and have always said I don't like it because if he didn't the only player in our team that dives would be the keeper. Every team has one (Liverpool seem to have more than others) but I noiced Bale started diving or going down easier after he was injured twice 2 seasons back by being kicked all over the park. I'm not sure if he dives to take the impact or not but I remember in the Liverpool game when he dived and the defender did look like he was going to go through him so he jumped only for the player to pull out. I'm not saying it's right but if you ever saw how many players went to take him 'out of the game' you can't blame him. Maybe he's trying to show defenders that if you try to tackle him now, he'll go down no matter what so they don't go to hurt him.
The problem is some players will always see that as reason to make sure he's well and truly clattered - as Charlie Adam did last season, for one.
[video=dailymotion;xp2coz]http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xp2coz_bale-wtf_sport[/video] Despite Ian 'I'm not being biased or anything, but...' Wright talking bollocks, I think that you can clearly see Gibbs fouling Bale on the second part of this clip.
